IN SHORT: Best left wrapped. [Rated R for violence, language, and sexuality/
nudity. 110 minutes]

It's a well known and far overused gimmick in suspense thrillers to set
a scene in a very quiet mode: say a single, attractive, vulnerable woman
out wandering in a lonely woods. Dead quiet. then . . . BAM! Thunder or
some other loud noise blasts out of the surround speakers and the audience
jumps in their seat from the sudden shock. Then, they settle back, sometimes
with a giggle, 'cuz they've been had.

And so we have The Gift, which aims for the feel of a scary story
told around a campfire (saying more than that will tip the gimmick, though
you'll probably figure that out way in advance). The movie has to resort
to the old BAM! because trying to set up thrills by using psychic visions
as a plot device is pretty damned hard, if not impossible. Psychic flashes
always involve detached images that, if the script is well written and
the editing and pacing is top notch, eventually start to make sense in
the viewer's mind. That is not the case here.

Sweet Widow Annie Wilson (Cate
Blanchett, click for StarTalk) reads cards and uses her "feelings"
to comfort residents in her small town of Brixton, Georgia. Annie doesn't call
herself "psychic" per se, and while the word "tarot" is never
mentioned at all -- her deck looks more like a set for testing ESP -- that is
what is implied. Our cousin, a professional tarot reader, would have had a fit.
Tough. It's a minor detail in a minor story involving school principal Wayne Collins
(Greg Kinnear) and his fiancee Jessica King (Katie Holmes), daughter of the richest
man in town. When Jessica goes missing and the cops can't find any clues, they
come to Annie. Sheriff Johnson (J.K. Simmons) doesn't believe any of this
stuff, but Annie comes up with enough that D.A. David Duncan (Gary Cole)
busts and jails no-good wife beater Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves). Barksdale
has been doing the nasty with Jessica on the side -- heck, half the town was doing
Jessica on the side -- and had more than once threatened Annie for giving advice
to his wife Valerie (Hilary Swank). We should also point out that, while
Annie is a widow, she has received more than her fair share of attention from
the Buddy (Giovanni Ribisi) who is the town's, uh, token mentally challenged person
and has defended Annie against the violent Donnie in the past.

We get a big trial. We get a big conviction. We get Annie having a new
feeling . . . oh you see this thing coming so far away that there's no
suspense in the damned thing at all.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Eight Bucks. Were Cranky
able to set his own price to The Gift, he would have paid...